PowerBI 2.0 Goes live July 24th 2015 – Power Update Becomes a Strategic Sidekick.

July 24, 2015 by Chris Floyd 1 Comment

It is a very exciting day tomorrow, July 24^th 2015, as Power BI 2.0 goes General Availability(GA). Power Pivot Pro summarized the impact of the event for the Excel / Power Pivot community in this article.

An unanswered question still, is what does this mean for the future of Power Update Next Gen? I will try to provide some insight on this in this blog post:

PowerBI provides Data Connectivity Gateways – both Personal and Data Management. Do I still need Power Update?

The answer is MAYBE. In short the Data Connectivity Gateways are paid features of PowerBI, and if an author of a PowerBI solution starts using a paid feature, ALL users that needs to access the workbook will need a PowerBI license. The PowerBI Free version only supports the date source listed below. So what does this mean for my licensing cost: Well it means $9.99/month=$119/Year per for every user granted access to any Dashboard for PAID features:

Supported data sources for the Power BI Free are:
AppFigures (Beta), Azure Blob store, Azure HD Insight, Azure Marketplace, Azure SQL Database, Azure Table store, Blank query (query that is not accessing any data source),Dynamics CRM Online, Facebook, GitHub (Beta),Google Analytics, Hadoop File (HDFS),OData Feed, Salesforce, Sweet IQ (Beta), Twilio (Beta),QuickBooks Online (Beta),Web, Zendesk (Beta)

As you can see – all a cool set of data sources, but no Data Power Houses like SQL Server, SSAS, Oracle, Postgress, SAP BO or anything else you would be looking for in a real life scenario.

Conclusion:

So if you really want access to the most used data sources, you will be left with a $9.99/month=$119/Year per user to access the cool databases in any shape or form with PowerBI 2.0.

PowerBI supports the cool on-premises data sources – but you need to pay $119/User per year.

Power BI currently supports these data source in a Data Management Gateway setup: Access Database, Custom SQL/Native SQL, File based (CSV, XML, Text, Excel, Folder), IBM DB2 Database, MySQL Database, Oracle Database, PostgreSQL Database, SharePoint List, SQL Server Database, Sybase Database, Teradata Database.

Conclusion:

SSAS OLAP, SSAS Tabular, SQL Server, and IBM DB2 is support by Power BI as datasourcea, which is very cool, but it as a cost associated with it. (see above)

But wait there is more – Power Query in Excel provides different data sources than PowerBI 2.0 data sources. How does that work?

ODBC, SAP BO, Great Plains, Axapta, Navision, Oracle OBIEE 11. How do I include these data sources in my Power BI solution?

Conclusion

We are now nailing it down to the best features of the PowerBI framework: OneDrive. Power Update supports data refresh of any Data Source that Power Query in Excel supports, including OneDrive, and this is why you might want to consider Power Update for your PowerBI solution.

What should my PowerBI strategy for Data Management look like?

• If you have on premise, well developed Data Warehouses, make a strategic choice and make your organization invest in Power BI Data Connectors and pay the $119 per user per year. Power Planner is a century long Microsoft Partner.
• If you are sitting on the fence, there are a few strategies to follow to test out the Power BI 2.0 Free version
  • Go all in with Power BI 2.0 and start paying
  • Try Out Power Update for ETERNITY with one Power BI Workbook for FREE
  • Download Power Update, and start test all you want.

Conclusion:

• Power Update makes you refresh ANY data source that Power Query in Excel lets you connect to. (PowerBI does not)
• Power Update does NOT require another licensing scheme for PowerBI 2.0. Current Pricing is $499 as a one-time fee, and $99 if you want updates to newer versions of Windows. Power Update lets you take full advantage of the entire portfolio.
• Create a Power BI strategy.
• Define your Data Sources – Make that lead you to the decision.
• Adhere to the new Microsoft PowerBI 2.0 solution, as long it follows the Microsoft Roadmap!
• Microsoft is using Power Update! J Redmond, Israel, Thailand and Singapore….

If you are convinced that Power Update might be right for you and how to make it work with OneDrive and PowerBI 2.0, please read how to make it work from this blog.

Happy BI

The Power Planner Team.

Chris